Build Your Business: Free Sites, Tools & Resources

free online tools to help your business Now is a great time to be an entrepreneur.

Why? Because no matter where you are in the world, as long as you have internet access, you have countless, valuable resources just a click away. These free, online tools and websites will make your life easier and your business more efficient.

Don’t be shy – go explore, see what works for you, and enhance your productivity.

Here are some of my favorites. (Tell us your favorites. What are we missing?)

FINANCES

Planwise: A free personal decision finance tool. You can use it to help you work towards your financial goals.
Freshbooks: An invoicing and billing application on the web. Everything is on the cloud, so you can access your account from any device. The basic account is free.
Mint: A personal finance tool that organizes and categorizes all your spending for you. Easy-to-use, visual and a nice interface that simplifies the process.

COLLABORATION TOOLS

Asana: Free for up to teams of 30 members, this sleek web-based tool makes projects easier to track, and helps you focus on your goals and priorities.
Google Docs (or Google Drive): Create documents, spreadsheets, presentations, or folders. Share them with others who can edit or add-to it for easy, real-time collaboration in your browser (log in from anywhere).

EMAIL MARKETING

MailChimp: This awesome tool is free for you if your email list has fewer than 2,000 subscribers; you can even send up to 12,000 emails per month absolutely free. Helps you design great looking email newsletters and track your results.

FORMS/SURVEYS

Wufoo: An easy-to-use web application that helps you build nice online forms. It is free for one user, three forms, three reports, and 10 fields.
Survey Monkey: The world’s most popular online survey tool. Create surveys to enhance your business! (Basic version is free)

CUSTOMER RELATIONSHIP MANAGEMENT (CRM)

Highrise: Their free plan is only for 2 users, no files, and 250 contacts. Pricing goes up from there depending on your business needs.
Base: Designed to boost your team’s sales productivity and keep your customer relationships on track, Base is free for you to use as you track up to 150 deals, manage unlimited contacts, and collaborate with your sales team.

WEBSITE TOOLS/TEMPLATES

WordPress: Build a great site and spend nothing. WordPress has mobile apps, tracking, integrated social sharing, and thousands of themes to choose from.
Weebly: It’s easy to create a free, professional site for your business or organization.

SOCIAL MEDIA

Tools to help you engage with your customers and promote your business.

Pinterest: Share photos, articles or other things related to your business in a beautiful, visual way with this virtual pin board. Free mobile app available as well.
Storify: Combine tweets, posts, photos, comments, and more from various social media platforms to create a visual story you want to tell! You just have to play with it to see how neat it is.

For Twitter

Hootsuite: You don’t have to download this in-browser tool, just log in online. Free for only one user and up to five social profiles, this is a great way to schedule tweets in advance. Get basic analytics, unlimited apps, and mobile access.
TweetDeck: Download this free app on your computer or use in-browser to help you manage and monitor your social media channels, as well as schedule tweets.
Buffer: This in-browser tool is available for download as well and allows you to manage multiple social media accounts and track analytics. It also has a great mobile app.

TRAVEL

Hipmunk: A (free) easy-to-use travel site that helps you book travel by comparing all flights and prices in a visual and simple way.
Kayak: Compare hundreds of travel sites at once. Also free!

FOR FUN

Design-Seeds: For all who love color, Design-seeds is full of color palettes that could inspire any of your creative endeavors.
Google Hangout: Google Hangout is free and similar to Skype, but easier to use with some additional fun effects. It can easily be used for virtual meetings, business or personal.